And on a shelf at the back, a stack of school exercise books with another child’s name on them.

Part Thirteen: The Name on the Books

Maya Beltran.

I knew the name before Detective Ibarra finished saying it, and so did everybody in that state, because a six-year-old girl had gone missing from a dance studio parking lot in the November and it had been on every news broadcast in Texas for eleven days and then less and then not at all.

Four months.